Link to Chronology
England and France vs the Pope
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter IV
Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII
2. The Crisis
p367 ...Having been on the point of waging war against each other, Philip the Fair and Edward I had vied with each other in the matter of military preparations, and the consequent expenditure. They had both imposed heavy taxes on the estates of the Church, as though they had been making preparations for a Crusade... Rome had been warned of what was happening, and Boniface VIII felt that he must take this opportunity of solemnly reminding the princes of the limits which theology assigns to the temporal powers. The Bull Clericis laicos (February 25th, 1296) strictly prohibited laymen from imposing taxes on the clergy without the consent of the Pope, annulled all dispensations which might have been accorded in this connection. and threatened all transgressors with excommunication...
In the conflict which was now beginning it was not the Pope but the kings who violated tradition... Now [as opposed to during the War of the Investitures] it was Boniface VIII who was defending his acquired prerogatives, while the revolutionary claims were made by Philip and Edward... The issue between Boniface and the two kings... was debated on political [not religious] grounds; the sovereign powers of the monarchy, the very existence of the State, and the most obvious interests of the nation were in question, so that this time public opinion, instead of supporting Rome, was bound to turn against the Papacy.
p368 It was evident that the Pope had not expected that his claims would arouse such opposition. His whole course of behavior goes to show that he was not aware that anything had changed in Europe since the days of Innocent IV and Frederick II, or that France and England, in 1296, were no longer what they had been a hundred years earlier. He had not realized that the prerogatives of the Crown were based on the consent of the peoples, and that the solidarity of the nation was so great, not only among the laymen, but also in the ranks of the clergy, that it was quite capable of defeating any attempt to intervene in the king's affairs, to paralyze his government, and imperil his finances or his military strength, in the name of the privileges of the Church...
Neither king saw fit to discuss the matter. Edward regarded the Bull as null and void, and continued to levy the prohibited taxes. Philip took measures calculated to show the Pope how dangerous it was to meddle in his affairs: since his financial resources were threatened, he himself threatened the finances of the Pope. He prohibited the export, beyond the frontiers of the kingdom, of monies or letters of credit. Immediately all the revenues which the papacy drew from France, and all those that were conveyed through France by the medium of the Pope's Italian bankers, were interrupted... A century earlier such a counter-stroke would have been impossible, for the means of delivering it were lacking. But the arm of the French monarchy was now so long, and its administration so complete and well-disciplined, that the order was punctually obeyed. The State, being attacked, defended itself with its own weapons, and Europe witnessed the novel spectacle of a sovereign resisting the orders of Rome and opposing them by simple administrative measure. The thing was so unexpected that Boniface VIII did not know where to turn... Without retracting the Bull he modified it to such an extent that it had no practical importance, and the canonization of St. Louis, pronounced in 1297, might be accepted as an act of homage to the House of France...
p370 Edward I, taking advantage of his peace with Philip, had once more marched against the Scots. The Scots having appealed to Rome, Boniface VIII intervened, accusing Edward of violence and injustice, and claiming the right to judge between the two parties. He had addressed himself only to the king; the king decided to address himself to the nation, and in January 1301 Parliament was convoked and required to pronounce upon the Papal claims. Thus this famous question of the temporal sovereignty and its limits, which had hitherto been discussed only by hermits, theologians, and legists, was now to be considered by the mandatories of a whole people.Their response was a categorical affirmation of the sovereign rights of the Crown. Prelates, barons, knights and burgesses were equally indignant with the Pope's interference in a war which was thoroughly popular, and which had been gloriously terminated by the battle of Falkirk (July 22nd, 1298). "Never," they replied, "shall we suffer that our king should submit to such unheard-of demands!"
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Boniface is also having problems with Philip and France.
p371 ...[Boniface] personally addressed... [Philip the Fair] in the Bull Ausculta fili, in which he reminded him that God had placed the successor of St. Peter over the heads of princes and States. "For this reason." said the Pope, "give no credit to those who would persuade thee that thou hast no superior. Who thinks thus deceives himself, and he who persists in this error is an infidel." Innocent III would not have spoken otherwise, and St. Thomas, some fifty years earlier, had expounded at length the theory by which these words were inspired. But this time they evoked the most passionate contradiction in the ranks of the jurists and doctors... According to... [Pierre Dubois and Jean de Paris], his competence extended only to purely religious matters... Philip, like Edward a year earlier... resolved that his quarrel should be the quarrel of his people. France had no parliament. Never yet had the delegates of the whole nation been convoked to advise the Crown. This great debate, in which the very principle of the king's sovereignty was at stake, was the occasion of the first assembly of the States-General: the first, and a worthy, example of those assemblies of which the last, five hundred years later, was to proclaim the Rights of Man and inaugurate the Revolution.
p372 The delegates of the clergy, the nobless and the bourgeoisie assembled at Notre-Dame de Paris on April 10th, 1302... All the delegates, clergy and laymen alike, enthusiastically declared their approval of the king's attitude...
From this moment the Pope's was a lost cause. The States-General decided the question of sovereignty in favor of the Crown -- that is, in favor of the State -- and their verdict was delivered with much greater emphasis than that of the English Parliament of the preceding year...
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p374 [The election of Clement V (1305-1314) follows the death of Boniface VIII] ... the new Pope was a Frenchman, and in electing him the Conclave had submitted to the will of Philip. It very soon realized that it had placed on the throne of St. Peter a pontiff who was incapable of forgetting that he was born a subject of the King of France... he was insensible to the majesty of Rome, and to the tradition of twelve hundred years which had made the city of the Emperors the city of the Popes... Clement V took up his residence in Avignon, and there his successors remained until 1378... the Popes derogated from the position which they had occupied for the past century, between God and the kings, and degraded themselves... at least in appearance, to the rank of proteges and instruments of the French Crown. This was the final consequence of the policy of Boniface VIII!...
p376 Thus the 13th century saw both the apogee of the Papal power and its decline. At the very moment when, triumphing over the Empire, it believed itself in a position to assume control over Europe, to unite the Continent against Islam, and to impose its tutelage on all the peoples, the economic and political transformations which had taken place, almost unnoticed by Rome, rendered the realization of the Papal designs impossible. The lofty ideal which the Papacy had conceived in a period of agricultural and feudal civilization no longer responded to the social realities... And yet, during the brief reign of St. Louis, [25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270] it had been possible to realize the Christian policy. This was the greatest moment of the 13th century, a moment of calm in the continual tempest into which the tumultuous forces of life were sweeping humanity.
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